You Sexy Thing
by TypewriterLover
Summary: Set after Silence in The Library. River is getting... well, bored with her life in the cyber realm, when a good-natured inventor comes along, looking for an artificial intelligence program for his latest invention: A Type 40 Tardis.


Disclaimer: I own NOTHING.

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><p>Time was relative in this cyber world of hers.<p>

River sat alone, her thoughts musing as she sat on a window seat in the library, a book, forgotten, held limply in her lap. She looked out over the green yard, the pleasant foliage whose leaves never changed colors, the perpetually blue sky. There was no way of telling how much time had passed since she had arrived here, or even since she had begun reading this book. There were no clocks in the database, the scenery never changed… it could've been hundreds of thousands of years since she first arrived here, or merely 3 days. It was so hard to tell.

She hadn't even changed out of her outfit, she realized, glancing down warily at the white ensemble. She never really was one for white… too pure, too… _clean_. Honestly, she'd take a pair of combat boots over her little white slippers any day. But the clothing was far more comfortable then a few terrain suits, army uniforms and one particular astronaut suit that she'd had the displeasure of wearing in the past. She shudders at the memory of that suit, and quickly flings the thoughts aside from her mind. She starts reading her book again, forcing her mind to focus on the plot, on the dots and dashes and letters and words, but (how later is it? 5 seconds? 7 hours? A day?) when she lifts her head once more to glance at the large, seemingly oaken doors of the library, she can't remember for the life of her as to what she just read. Sighing and shrugging, she forgoes the attempt, and places the book back on it's shelf, before making her way out the doors and down the empty halls.

She should be thankful, of course. Technically, she was a dead woman. But she was living, in a sense, and there were exponentially worse places to live, she knew that for sure. She had her colleagues from the expedition, clean clothes (despite the nauseating color) warm, _human_ food, an entire manor, free to roam about. But she couldn't help but be bored. She had traveled through time and space, had defeated civilizations, seen incomprehensibly wonderful things. Compared to that… well, this was about as entertaining as watching dust motes (something, she was horrified to admit, she had done on occasion since her arrival here).

So it's understandable that while she was walking along the shaded green paths of the gardens, that she immediately perked up when she felt a presence. _Someone __must __be __using __the __library__'__s __terminal__…_ It wasn't often that library visitors delved this deep into the database, so much so that she became aware of their presence. It wasn't as obvious as seeing another person, or such. More like the feeling you get when you're at a party, and you become vaguely aware that another guest has arrived, even though you don't see them. Typically River just let the browsers be, content with going along with whatever it was she was doing, but when a voice said "Oh! Well, hello there," she couldn't help but pause.

It could be dangerous. _They __might __want __to __kidnap __my __coding __and __use __me __for __some __sort __of __diabolical __plan._Her inner voice of reason (which sounded disconcertingly similar to her father) chirped from the back of her head, _but __oh __screw __it __she __was __bored __and __why __the __hell __not?_ She was just a string of data now. She'd hardly be of use to someone. So, speaking aloud and feeling a tad foolish, she responded. "Hello as well. Are you lost?" She could feel the presence growing stronger, come closer, but there was still no physical being apparent, so she merely faced upwards, at the holographic blue sky.

"Ah, not exactly. I'm sort of… well, I suppose I am a bit lost." The voice sheepishly replied. The voice itself was a rather pleasant one, she noticed. Male, but it almost had female speech habits, as if it'd been rather used to talking as a woman. But _why?_ "I see," the amusement was obvious in River's voice. "And what are you looking for?" The Voice flustered for a moment, almost as if it was trying to figure out how best to describe what it was looking for. "Well… I'm looking for… erm… well, something like an artificial intelligence program, I suppose. A personality program, so to speak." River raised an eyebrow at the sky. "An AI program? Why would you need that? Better yet, why would you go to the library for one? Don't they have computer programmers in your planet?"

The Voice gave a good-natured laugh. "Yes, but they haven't quite created what I'm looking for yet. They made a program capable of thought, yes, but it lacked a very important thing…" Her curiosity getting the better of herself, she couldn't help but ask, "That being?" With a somewhat dramatic flair in it's tone, the Voice proclaimed, "_Empathy_."

Before River had the chance to reply, the Voice sprang off into a rant. "You see, I'm attempting to create the latest version of one of our main modes of transport, but the previous prototypes have failed, using that system. The program has to be incredibly smart, incomprehensibly so, and be able to have an extensive memory. But it can't be artificial. It needs feelings, needs emotions, needs _empathy_. So I heard a rumor that this library, the biggest library in the universe, had… well, _deceased_ people's personalities stored as data programs-no offense. Not terribly sure as to how all those people ended up in here, but ah… Well, I just thought I'd pop by and see if, by any chance, one such program might be willing to come with me…?"

River stared, disbelievingly at the sky. "Let me get this straight: You came to this library, dug all this way down into the main hard drive of the database to ask a dead person's remnants of a personality to come with you and be stuck into a _machine_?" The Voice coughed awkwardly. "Well… yes." River made an undignified sound, but the Voice quickly scrambled with its words "Well, it's not as bad as it sounds! I'm not going to be shutting anyone up in toasters, or anything like that-" "Well then what _are_ you shutting them up in?" she demanded, arms crossed.

The Voice faltered, as if it hadn't been expecting that question. "Erm… well, you may not have heard of it…" She lifted her chin daringly. "Try me."

The Voice sighed, long and withdrawn.

"A Tardis. A TT Type 40 Tardis."

River sucked in a long, astonished breath. "You see, it stands for-" "Time and Relative Dimensions in Space." The Voice faltered once more, clearly surprised. "Oh… ah, so you have heard of it. Oh, well, that makes things much easier…" Her mind was racing, cataloguing possibilities and ideas and thoughts and memories and oh my Lord, what was she _doing_? What would her mother think? Oh screw it, for all she knew her mother was dead. "You need a realistic personality program to run the central control console of your latest type of Tardis?" The Voice appeared to have recovered from the shock, and now seemed to realize that he wasn't dealing with some oblivious idiot. "Yes, that's right." "And the rest of the Tardis has been fully functional in the tests so far; the only issue is the program isn't… empathic?" She got the sense that if she could see the Voice, it'd be nodding it's head rigorously. "Yes, the rest of the Tardis is completely fine. I just need the last piece, the central control. Otherwise, it's just a machine."

River Song took a deep breath, calmed her thoughts, and allowed herself a devious grin.

"Alright then. I volunteer."


End file.
